Chapter Text
Rhys can’t sleep, the night before before his first day school. Of course he remembers what going to public school was like, and interacting with kids his age. He just lost his arm and his eye, he didn’t grow up, like, a complete hermit. But looking in on his friends’ villages in Animal Crossing and making origami at the lunch table to impress them in middle school is a far cry away from starting sophomore year of high school, friendless.
In a new town, even.
His first impression of Pandora was heat. Choking heat that makes it hard to breathe; makes him grateful for his basement level room. His second is rust, and--well, if a town could feel like decay, that’s Pandora. His family lives in one of the nicer neighborhoods, but the whole place seems… aged. Falling apart. Scads of men in wifebeaters or less walk around town in the middle of the day, lips thinned and eyes hard with hunger. Bums, Rhys’s father scoffs, too lazy to go out and get a job. You work hard, Rhys. Don’t you expect anything... An awkward pause, and then his father coughs, just given to you.
As if his father is the one who got them this nice, faux-Victorian house. That was all Rhys’s mother, and he is so glad to have inherited her quick mind and clever hands as well as her thick hair and fine-boned features.
It was his mother who spent sleepless nights researching options and talking him through the choices for experimental treatments, for both his arm and his eye, and then moved mountains to get him into the programs. Physically moved them closer to the best hospital they could afford, too.
But so much of the necessity for that is over, and now here Rhys is, stomach tied in knots and--he checks his phone--well, five or so hours til his first day of school at Dahl High. Joy.
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Stanton Dahl High School--Dahl High--is rated very well on just about every national scale. Its classes and extracurriculars are innovative and engaging. Its teachers are top-tier graduates from very well respected teaching programs. It is also a full hour and twenty minutes drive from Pandora, so Rhys may have (read: definitely) over-estimated how much time he had for sleep last night.
He stumbles off the bus, groggy and loose-limbed from lack of sleep. Mistake. Clanging his metal arm against the side of the bus creates one hell of a noise; Rhys can feel his cheeks filling with dull red warmth, but when he looks through his eyelashes no one in the small courtyard in front of the school seems to have done more than glance his way. It probably helps that despite the unholy heat, Rhys opted for a long sleeved shirt for today. Only the tips of his fingers poke out beyond the cuffs.
Heading for the least occupied pocket of space, Rhys winds up leaning awkwardly against a pristine gunmetal column, happy for even this slight shade. He wedges his fingers in his pockets, decides that looks dumb, crosses his arms, feels like a tool, and so just ends up gripping the straps of his backpack. No one approaches; they all seem happy enough in their established cliques, and Rhys is already too exhausted to really put forward an effort into maintaining eye contact with anybody.
Fortunately, the bell rings before too long, and the doors are opened to let everyone stream in. Unfortunately, what had, in the open space outdoors, been a loud but comfortable susurration becomes a cacophony of shrieks and laughter and coos and noise that Rhys is no longer accustomed to, being used to the orderly chatter and beeps of the hospital and the quiet of home. He flinches backwards.
Into a very solid chest.
“Oh! I, uh,” Rhys stutters, and half turns towards whoever he bumped into--and looks up. Not far up, but ever since his first painful growth spurt at age twelve that never seems to have stopped, Rhys hasn’t really had to look up at anybody. It’s slightly disorienting--what’s even more so is who looks back at him.
Tall, of course, and slender, like Rhys, unlike Rhys he looks like he’s got a bit more breadth in his shoulders; room to grow. Also unlike Rhys, the boy--man?--no, boy, probably--looks so comfortable in his skin, if slightly irritated. He narrows mismatched eyes and cocks an eyebrow at Rhys, so: growing more irritated.
“Right! I, um, I’m sorry, haha, I just--” Rhys starts to say, and it’s honestly a blessing to be cut off.
“Nope, nu-uh, poodle. I do not give a single tin shit why you jumped like the world’s most high strung cat at the phenomenon of doors opening. Just get the hell out of my way, there we go, great, awesome, let’s never ever talk again, it’ll be magical.” And with a lazy flap of one long fingered hand, he’s gone.
Rhys gapes after him, then buries his head in his flesh hand. His first day is going fantastic.